Meet Me in the City

All Night Long Kimbrough was easily the most arresting figure in "Deep Blues," the documentary movie and soundtrack album about the contemporary Delta blues scene. Music critic Robert Palmer, the movie's "guide," produced All Night Long, Kimbrough's first full length album after more than 40 ye...	God Knows I Tried This CD has a considerable mix of music on it, which is understandable given that it's a posthumous release of tracks collected over five years of recording. Every track, however, showcases guitarist Kimbrough's distinctive style, which regional isolation made very different from...	Most Things Haven't Worked Out	Sad Days, Lonely Nights	Do the Rump!
You Better Run: The Essential Junior Kimbrough When Junior Kimbrough died in January 1998, part of the spirit of Mississippi hill-country blues went with him. He was a proud musician, aware of his African roots and his artistic singularity--perhaps the last unique voice in the genre. The sound of his bawling singing and unpre...	Thickfreakness Akron, Ohio's Black Keys offer crunchy, riff-heavy blues-rock that is remarkably rich and textured, particularly when one considers that they are merely a duo. Continuing in the vein of their 2002 debut, The Big Come Up, this sophomore CD leavens their garage blues with enough in...	Sunday Nights - The Songs of Junior Kimbrough There are a few musicians more deserving of a tribute than the late Junior Kimbrough. There may be bluesmen of greater fame, but the Mississippi native was among the best. Kimbrough's earthy, groove-heavy approach was somewhat akin to that of John Lee Hooker. Not one of the rock ...	Burnside on Burnside Mississippi hill country patriarch R.L. Burnside's two previous albums dabbled in remixes and trip-hop experimentation geared to the college-rock market. This is a restorative: pure slide 'n' drone blues caught live in January 2001 at Portland, Oregon's Crystal Ballroom. The 73-y...	Come on In Now, here's what you call a break from tradition. After bridging the gap between punk and blues on his collaboration with the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, A Ass Pocket of Whiskey, Mississippi bluesman R.L. Burnside ventures into the world of beats and grooves with Come On In, a s...

Well Okay, this may not be his best work .
Even though this album has been given some terrible reviews It still diserves at least 4 stars. If you have never heard Junior before than this Cd is probably not for you. But, if you are a hard-core Jonior fan than this will make an interesting adition to you collection. Okay, with the exeption of the title track the audio quality is terrible. But, I listen to guys like Blind Lemon Jefferson, Son House and Charly Patton so much that this doesn't bother me. Plus, if you hate the first 4 tracks, the live tracks will more than make-up for that. In the last four tracks have a lot of screaming fans and guitar feed back. On the last track you can hear Junior thanking his fans and unplugging his guitar. Plus it even has a small clip of Stevie Ray Vaunghn at the end. This May sound silly but if you close you Eyes and use your imagination, it is almost like you are at the concert.

The Bottom of the Barrel
I have all of Junior Kimbrough's CD's, and think each one is a five star recording--EXCEPT this one. Fat Possum has a bad habit of releasing anything they have in their vaults, particularly if the artist has died (witness the awful--and accurate--reviews of Asie Payton's final album "Worried".) "Meet Me In The City" is a CD of cuts recorded at home, live at blues festivals--[heck], even in the shower, it sounds like. The quality of the recordings is [poor], and a couple of the songs you've heard before if you own all the Kimbrough Fat Possum releases ("Done Got Old" and "All Night Long," for instance.) For all that, you can easily hear the great bluesman Kimbrough was underneath the fuzzy background noise, sloppy editing & repetition. For collectors and purists only.

Meet Him or Deprive Yourself
Junior Kimbrough was a far cry from the rock and roll-aspiring, showboating poseurs passing themselves off as bluesmen these days. No bluesman since Muddy Waters took such a sure sense of the Delta soil from which roots the blues were born and drop-kicked it this acutely into his own time and place. This "prequel" to his Fat Possum recording career is about as raw as the primal blues gets and then some. The four homemade solo recordings which lead the album off are worth the price alone - maybe this isn't the most professional recording you'll ever hear, but if you think anyone else's blues stables will come within five nautical miles of this nudity of feeling - never mind to the most inspired deployment of electric guitar feedback the blues has ever known (imagine Charlie Patton beating the Velvet Underground at their own game) - you're dreaming even deeper than they are. The live cuts with Kimbrough's trio? For him they're about the going rate - but for anyone else, it's rotsa ruck trying, and they'd be damn fools not to.